Miroslav Válek - Drumming to the other side
(Bubnovanie na opačnú stranu)

Short before death I buy a chromed bike
ringing to all sides of the world that you are lovely.
Perhaps in March
when there are smokes above the earth like from crematories
the soil burns the dead body of the last year's weed,
perhaps in March, getting off a tram,
I fell in love with you in the time of germination.
At that time the submarine fleet of cereal grains
only hesitantly extended out its periscopes,
the spring was a cold fever
it shook the aspens all evening,
a silly rain was falling
already by heart and with no effort.
On that day you found a mirror and a drowned kitten
with a tie of silk
- oh, beautified death, more cruel
than the other ordinary killings -
You combed your hair kneeling
and against the riding train's direction
a small star rose on the top of your head.
*
I adore soldiers,
the smell of their belts and soured bread,
I like you,
generals of riding corps
and commanders of regiments' band,
all of you who have a star less,
I humbly love.
The pink nostrills of your horses excite women
and your drums, their laconic thundering
- like a woken-up gorilla running across the dark forest !
And then silence and then again and again
they drum on the old leather of the world :
Formation of mountain ranges and perishing of oceans,
move of nations and sudden slide of rocks !
At the end only a little meaningless rumble,
aldermen march hitting their bald heads with hands :
How could we ... How might we allow ...
But the progress of humankind started already a long time before them.
Drums passed through centuries,
Drums were predicting the future,
drums of rebellions and storms of drums beneath the sky,
boomerang of drums driving herds to the walls,
bulldogs of drums against the slaves,
dear baby of drums, I am swinging you,
orphan, I will put you like a frozen bird on album
of a senile retired general,
bubbles of drums,
what a shame,
a drum caught rust and went bust !
So it happened as I supposed :
We have forgotten the accidental love,
her name, her taste,
we have found others, so it goes
and maybe after seven hundred years
during deep plowing,
her canine tooth will shine on, yellow like a wasp in raspberries.
Excuse us, lovely Brunhilde.
And that is the opportunity to repeat it all again.
So once more,
I like you,
generals of riding corps,
oh, Marshal Ney,
Scipio Africanus,
Genghis Khan,
inventors of unpunishable death,
devourers of fire,
jugglers,
throwing their knives against history.
And the Earth spins more and more furiously,
the sun sets behind the horse manes,
hoofs on the glass
drumming on the other side of the world,
crazy charleston,
stamp of avalanches,
jungle !
Where is your whip, tamers of pardals and pumas ?
The death - a rusty mare - neighs so urgently,
cultivate that tender beast,
that clean flower,
until it becomes the absolute rose,
suitable for birthday but also for a deep sleep,
or for a sentence :
"Dear parents, I will be a little late, because ..."
The perfected death to every family !
The hygienic death for future mothers and their babies !
The death,
tiled, white, the final form of the flowing time
And everything in it is strictly divided :
FOR LADIES - FOR GENTLEMEN
But the gentlemen will not come here to perish,
they shave themselves with an exclusive shaver Philips
and drink gin.
An electric bee buzzes next to their ears but gives them no honey.
Why should it ? Their life is sweet enough anyway.
Oh, yes, lovely lady with the mouth like honey, tonight
for your breasts below the neckline
our Hiroshima perfume spray
and your happiness will persist,
tonight,
at the big moment of the 20th century
when the capitalism begins its unique striptease.
It alrady shakes its breasts,
all the California apples roll and ring loudly.
Oh, my beauty, your smile is a blinking neon,
a golden fish in the aquarium,
a rainbow cocktail in your eyes.
Lean back your head towards the stars, another veil falls
like a butterfly, jazz, jazz,
the mass crash of armored fleets.
Pink hips are appearing
Iron muscles of straddled legs,
Oh,
Y,
The known ball above the horns of a bull,
the earth globe in full blossom, happy and fat,
America
dancing like an elephant
on plantations of the world,
America in its nuclear hat,
a bit hysterical sobbing miss.
Uneasy because of that, the world frowns,
America,
do not play with that blouse !
One more button and you will become saint,
you will come alive to the heaven's door
America, burn at four !
Wailed the limousine, the sad moon of mandoline
shone on the land.
America, dance !
America, play !
Midnight.
Miss, we turn off the neon in hair.
Twilight plays it tight right behind the net,
placing all where you do not expect it,
saxophones stick out their tongues,
stretching their burning necks towards the Moon,
they howl their wolfish sorrow.
In the artificial night
artificial stars fall on us.
Sex and bells,
burning cinnabars,
On the fire blade dancing, white, alone,
only the mirrors from all sides
work nervously with passion,
they catch her in every position,
throwing away their sketches just to begin the new.
Everywhere is a plethora of her lips,
of her smiles,
of her hair
her fingers drop down pepper,
her breasts, her calves,
the naked, flexible air,
waves of Atlantic,
fishermen collecting the shells,
high tide, pearls.
And then bump like a gong
like a small, dim sun on the motionless sky,
we realized her belly
perfectly rounded,
the scale of a glittering fish,
the circle of Archimedes,
a disk above the pedestrians' heads.
She touched it with her hands, we saw from the short distance :
It is satiated.
Filled by the slaughterhouses of Chicago,
the slaughterhouses of Laos,
the slaughterhouses of Vietnam
and the slaughterhouses of Malaysia,
it is satiated.
And here the comb of the Moon has broken,
the sky is full with stars,
as if scythed, it foundered down upon the table.
Immediately stood up bank managers,
money forgers
and owners of steel trusts,
as well as archbishops
and automobile kings,
ran away to darkness of ink,
their chins shivered,
their heads burned like furnaces full of coke.
The belly of America was found,
they slap it with their red hands,
they beat it
like box champions,
it is the known rumble,
as if in the centre of the Earth the thunder was born.
And it is a drum,
the belts are jarring,
steel bullets already burrowed into the earth return
to their barrels,
the submarines shift beneath the ice,
riding regiments since the creation of the world saddle their horses,
archaeanic layers ascend to the Earth's surface,
a lightning on the bottom of the sea lifts the weight of the waters,
a snake sizzles like a bottle of fizzy water,
metals oxidize.
A horseshoe burns oils,
wanting to return to the hoof of its horse,
barrels rattle on the cobbled road
and they are drums,
here are their foreheads without a wrinkle,
here they go with their tremendous heads
against thw wall.
Their rhytm is what makes us sleepy,
and behind our head drums beat like a clock,
when we sleep :
Death, death, death.
Oh, drum, the cataract of the sky,
what do you see behind the horizon of blood ?
Oh, drum, the millstone of the world, do not turn so fast,
do not yet sprinkle the flour upon our mothers' heads.
Oh, drum, inside you we are sewn like kittens
and as well silly.
From your leather, drum, we must once cut free,
burn it, fly away
and feel the blow of thunder behind our heels.
*
Short before death I buy a chromed bike
ringing to all sides of the world that you are lovely.
Short before death, but nevertheless in the half of my travel,
like a man who knows he cannot make it to the top of a hill,
but he does not give up nor interrupts his ride
The last competitor is alrady out of his sight for a long time
he has no connection, receives no letters,
He did not fall in love with a brunette behind the window
nor drank from the others' wells.
He feels himself behind him and he escapes
to meet himself he has but himself,
his another form,
which he suspects only dimly,
like an appletree suspects an apple,
like the air suspects a bird.
And maybe it is just the sense of it all,
of that stubborn and hardheaded ride.
But maybe centuries have passed since then and
the world has changed.
We know that :
"The square above the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle ... etc"
We know that the Earth is round
and love is eternal.
We have discovered America and dynamite.
We have reconstructed the gramophone,
the prototype of the parrot,
the representative of diluvial artistic circles.
We have constructed metaphor and alcohol,
the fuels of the senses,
we have manufactured porcelain
we know how to crush the atomic nuclei.
Stop the rider behind his own shadow !
He is ridiculous to everyone, that blind polisher of the stars,
He is ridiculous to everyone,
with that rainbow above his head
wearing that ancient jersey.
Dogs from the entire planet are biting his calves,
already two thousand years he has been racing in his own blood.
Stop the man,
he lives but
a thousand,
two thousand
a hundred thousand,
it does not matter how many thousands of eye winks.
It is but a gesture,
a snapping of fingers,
a helpless movement of a shoulder.
And all that suffices is pneumonia,
all that suffices is fall down from stairs,
a crazy white horse
and a beat on a drum
- the sun will tear off,
the hot sky will get under your nails,
it will be all.
The man has anyway always a short time before his death,
the man is mortal,
the man lives anyway always with one leg in his grave.
I liked your hair, beautiful Brunhilda,
I wondered about the little star
that was rising among them,
although several centuries have passed since then
and everything is different.
We recognize ourselves in the stretch-faced rider during his turn,
we feel in our legs the steep ascending sharp as a storm,
the hum of bells in our head.
That is the travel which must everyone do in himself
and all in common, on their trajectory.
That is the wonderful perpetuum mobile,
conversion of energy, division of the cells,
infinity of the man,
his blood, his glory.
We have discovered the immortality of life,
we know how to tune the thunder,
we put our hand on the drums' leather
to let it grow over with grass.
In the name of life we call on the dead,
who, even at death, are in their proper place, by their names :
Comrades, listen to the last music,
see how burns the bow on the only string.
It is not tooth-grinding :
"The imperialists are cutting off the branch on which they are sitting. There is no force in the world to stop the progress of mankind ..."
The man is eternal !